


In the Cornfields

by gyromitra



Series: The Bureau [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Complicated Relationships, Hopeful Ending, Horror, Idiots in Love, Inspired by B.P.R.D. / Hellboy, M/M, Past Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-02 14:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16306754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyromitra/pseuds/gyromitra
Summary: Three stories about things that dwell in the cornfields, two nights on the train, and one end neither man nor monster can escape.Or:There are monsters in the corn, and Reaper might not be the scariest of them all.





	1. 1-2

**Author's Note:**

> Halloween story. Inspired by B.P.R.D. / Hellboy.

It takes an hour for them to settle comfortably after boarding the train in Toledo. When everything is stashed properly in their compartment, Jack takes his medication out of the backpack, and Gabriel stares out of the window at the scenery giving him some semblance of privacy even if he knows Jack was never bothered by it.

“Have you ever seen a corn demon?”

“Yeah, I have,” Jack throws the syringe in the trash and swabs the injection site again with alcohol, “at least, things we called corn demons. Ugly fuckers. What brought that up?”

Gabriel shrugs and tilts his head towards the window, at the fields they are passing by where in the light of the setting sun a gargantuan translucent silhouette stands immobile – almost – for its head slowly tracks the moving train.

“It’s no ‘corn demon’ but it doesn’t bother people, does it? It’s better to leave it be.”

“How many of those can be left…”

“You know, back at home, there were fields you never came close to after the sundown,” Jack grimaces. “Because there were things in them, in the dark, and in the winter, there were bones, animals mostly, but some were strange, and then, there were human bones, a lot of human bones each year, bones that were gnawed on, with imprints of teeth, with marrow sucked out.”

Gabriel stays silent because Jack never speaks of his home, and neither does he talk about his past before the Bureau.

“Old man Jenkins’ fields were notorious for it. I must’ve been ten, or something, and went there, run into the field, so the monsters would eat me. There was this clearing, maybe ten meters, littered with half-eaten corpses of small animals, dogs, raccoons, even a cow, and those things were everywhere around, circling me in the corn. No cats, though, not one cat, at least I don’t remember there being one dead cat.”

“Cats are too smart.”

“Dunno. Every cat I knew was a lazy dumbass but they lived. So there was this ten years old me, with a failing flashlight, in the middle of the corn circle full of dead stinking animals, and things outside the circle, the eyes flashing from every side,” Jack chuckles and closes his eyes, “and only then I’m starting to feel fear. Yeah, I wanted the corn demon to eat me but that was as meaningful as holding my breath till I suffocate. They are silent but the corn, the stalks, I can hear them moving, and then one moves, jumps me, and the only thing I can see are its glowing eyes and yellow teeth.”

“And that’s when you turned out to be the great psychic prodigy you are,” Gabriel jokes reaching for the water bottle.

“Nah, that’s when the bigger meaner monster came. It,” Jack inhales, “it just snatched that first one from the air and slammed it into the ground, tore into it, shredded it to pieces, and shrieked, shrieked so hard I heard only ringing as it stalked around the circle dragging the dead one behind. Then it just left and I stayed in that circle till the morning until they found me. Never had to be afraid of the corn demons since that night, sure, they came close, they stalked me, but I became untouchable, probably until that big one eats me.”

“So, in short, never coming back to Indiana?”

“If I can help it. Throw me that paper, could you, not feeling like sleeping right now.”

Jack idles with the newspaper, disconnected from the words on the pages because he remembers that night vividly and there are things he dares not to speak of, not yet, maybe not ever. The hulking creature’s face – the polished skull with smoldering red points of eyes – the darkness rolling off it in waves. Its shrieks, a terrifying call repeating ‘mine’ in an alien language again and again as it circled the clearing, and then, finally, turned back to him, glided over the carcasses on the ground, this darkness stripping the meat off the bones.

And the instant he knew the creature’s name as its claws streaked gore and viscera on his cheeks with a gentle touch.

But the silence does not endure and inexplicably they gravitate towards each other – an unspoken agreement not to mention the obvious. Later, they lie curled on one row of the seats and by all means, it should be uncomfortable but Gabriel figures they will feel it tomorrow. Jack stirs and reaches for the jacket hanging over the door. Gabriel swats at his hand.

“You can’t smoke in here.”

“Fuck. I hate trains, and you’re even worse,” Jack digs his feet deeper under his thighs and Gabriel now acutely remembers he always gets painfully cold – his feet and palms – so much sometimes that he would need an electric blanket or a bottle of hot water to even fall asleep.

“You’ll thank me in a few years.”

“Yeah, if I’ll live, maybe, don’t count on it though.”

“This talk again,” Gabriel sighs, “and you’re getting off at the next station, it would be…”

“Perpignan. Listen, you want to look for the wolf so you can traverse the dungeons and find the cockatrice, you’re welcome to do it on your own, I’ll just call the nice custodian lady I’m not coming,” Jacks tugs at the glove and Gabriel withdraws his hand rapidly. For some time the only sound is the lull of the train racing over the tracks. “You know,” Jack breaks the silence, his gaze focused on the scenery outside the window – maybe gazing upon something no-one else could see, “the things in the fields, they were something mundane, but this other thing, I had seen it more than once. It was the night before my fifteenth birthday, and I stayed outside far longer than I should, stupid, stupid kid. But I was no more afraid of them.”

“And that other thing?”

“It was, is, something else, if it had any designs I knew there was nothing I could do about them, and it had been five years. So, there was this kid, he was eighteen, Tommy Lou everyone called him. I guess,” there is something derisive in Jack’s voice Gabriel doesn’t like and it sets him on edge, “I must’ve been a pretty little thing since he decided to give me a birthday gift a bit early that year.”

“You’re a pretty thing now,” Gabriel murmurs glancing up and the fingers in his hair still for a second – then return to their motions.

“I ran down the road, didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to follow me into the fields but he did, and he was bigger and faster than me, and I was panicked. It would be enough to dive between the stalks and lie there, but I run making all this noise hoping to maybe find this clearing again, and he catches up with me. Bigger, faster, stronger. Throws me to the ground and I can’t fight back because he’s eighteen and I’m fifteen,” Jack’s voice fades to whisper. “I think I ran because I wanted them to take him, but it wasn’t the monsters in the corn only that other thing that came. I couldn’t breathe, and then it was holding me close, and with my eyes closed, it was warm to the touch. It chanted all the time, and the screams, Tommy Lou was screaming all the time, like a wounded animal being eaten alive. I don’t know how much time passed until it let me go, but it did eventually, and I had stumbled away, out of the field to the road. They were all standing there but no-one dared to enter the corn even as he screamed and screamed because there were those lights floating over the field, there were the monsters there. I was told… I was told he was still alive, and conscious, somehow, when they found him in the morning. But not for long. The moment they got him out of the field he died. Closed casket funeral.”

Gabriel remains silent because there is nothing that can be said about what he has heard now. He reaches for Jack’s free arm and puts it around himself, keeps it in place with the touch.

“I think it wasn’t chanting, not really, I think it was singing to me, the same language like the one on the recordings.”

“So it brought you back from the dead?” It is a memory Gabriel would gladly get rid of. For six days Jack had screamed in a language none could identify until his voice broke and became what it was now. On the seventh day, he fell into a coma and his hair turned white.

“No. Something else but whatever that was, it spoke the same language as the thing from the fields,” Jack yawns and Gabriel decides to take it for a good sign. They still have another night to spend on the train, and he idly clicks the light off.

When Jack dreams, he is back in the field of corn, and the creature whose name he knows but will not speak holds him close while it croons. Its claws soothingly travel the length of his back as it gently rocks him back and forth.

Its skull face is smooth no more, the cracks are deep, and split it into three equal parts, and as he closes his eyes, it is warm to touch, almost like living flesh.

Tommy Lou screams as the darkness writhes under his skin and eats away at him, breaks his bones and turns him inside out.


	2. 3- Hotel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cat. The city. The hotel. The slightly obscure war trivia. (As a side note: the cockatrice, the wolf, the dungeons, the post office, the sculpture - they exist. The hotel, not exactly). To the tune of The Born King by Daniel Pemberton.

“I hate this,” Jack throws the book to the side with a light growl in his voice. “I hate trains. I hate being cooped up in this damn compartment. Remind me again why are we exactly going by train?”

“We’re smuggling weapons through international borders,” Gabriel shares the sentiment even if it is surprising coming from Jack who could spend literal days buried under covers in his own room.

“I know but, man, fuck trains, fuck trains, next time I’m in charge of transportation, you point, I get us there!”

“How?”

“I’ll get Lena to give us a ride in Slipstream,” Jack looks at him with his eyebrows raised.

“I don’t want to owe anything more to Bureau…”

“If anything, she owes me for that thing with Emily,” Jack interrupts him. “Wait, yeah, you wouldn’t know, Lena’s got a girlfriend now, and they both live on site, her name’s Emily,” he continues with a sudden burst of excitement and Gabriel comes to realization he had missed this, the way Jack’s face lights up when he speaks about people he considers friends. “She got herself involved with witches and possessed a bit, and then they hit it off, real hard. I think Petras got more than his share in the beginning, even changed his desk, yeah, it was funny to see them haul this ancient block of furniture out.”

And how Jack could babble away hours with the newest gossip which isn’t as unwelcome as he would have expected it to be now – but something starts to nag at him.

“Why weren’t you living on the base?”

“It felt empty after you were gone,” Jack shoots him a look, the cheerfulness vanished, ”didn’t even say goodbye, asshole, but I guess it’s ‘all in the package’ deal. Could have at least, you know, leave a card or something, not just up and vanish. Or call. There’s this thing called mobile phones, ring a bell?”

“It was better this way,” Gabriel averts his gaze, in the same instant annoyed the subject comes up and deeply relieved because it has finally been breached after three weeks back in Jack’s company.

“Better for whom?”

“Better for everyone involved.”

“You mean, better for you, so you could go wallow in misery on your own,” Jack turns to the window absentmindedly picking on his own shirt. “You know, if you had asked me, I would have gone with you, no questions asked, and besides, you came to me now that you need help.”

Maybe this was the exact reason Gabriel had not asked. Because, with Jack, things were always that complicated and that easy at the same time – but before he has a chance to answer a blue-greenish blur passes through the side of the compartment and hops on Jack’s lap. Dizzy.

“There you are, I was just starting to worry something ate you.” The ghost cat mewls and bumps Jack’s hand demanding his attention. She had to be put down long ago – and it was the only time he had seen Jack cry – but she never left. “Weren’t you ever curious about mirror boy?” Jack looks up when Dizzy settles on his lap after a minute or two of fidgeting. “Why some people call me that?”

Just like that, the subject is changed.

“You didn’t look like you were fond of it.”

“I’m not. Never was,” Jack sighs. “But that’s what landed me in Bureau. That’s what happened. I walked out of a mirror.”

“Only that?”

“No, of course not, because this was also the third time I met that other thing in the cornfields. You know, there are things you never notice how… strange they are. Because they are all you know. You never question why something is done because that’s how it always has been like, like the offerings left for the ‘corn demons’, or the dances only for the ‘younglings’,” Jack rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I grew up in a cult.”

“A cult? Nothing sounded like…”

“Because all of it was everyday stuff,” Jack continues. “The offerings, the prayers, the dances in the barn after which sometimes some people disappeared and no-one ever spoke about that but the things in the corn were quieter for some time. There was this tradition during the dances, a game for kids, you know, standing in front of the old mirror and reciting one of the prayers, and then maybe you’d see your future spouse in there. Some people claimed they saw something in the mirror, and people that were gone after the dances were always those who saw something. Not all of them but only them.”

“It was two and a half year after Tommy Lou, and everyone had already stood in front of the mirror except me because I knew, felt, something bad was going to happen, and I thought it won’t happen if I don’t look,” Jack chuckles mirthlessly, “but I was wrong, so wrong, and when I finally did because everyone was waiting for me, I didn’t even manage to start reciting because it was there, in the mirror, behind me. I think I screamed then, totally girlish shriek as it reached from the mirror and pulled me in through it into whatever was on the other side, and I didn’t even imagine that because I heard other people screaming.”

“It was dark and cold inside, a dead place with no life, and the only source of light was that mirror behind me. That thing held me in place not letting me leave as the screams from the other side changed,” Jack closes his eyes and in his mind the creature – withered down with age – pulls him into its embrace with slowness speaking of eons, and he raises his hands to gently trace fingers along the sides of its face now yellowed with time and in places black with rot. Even its eyes, once burning points of fire, now smolder dimly. Under his fingertips, the bone slowly crumbles away as the creature clutches at him with its failing grasp and they slowly sink to the ground together. This time it is him who cradles the creature to his breast. Maybe he is the last kindness the cruel fate affords it as it dies and turns into dust in a world gone cold and empty long ago. “I can’t tell you how long I was in there, you know, but when I went away and came back through the mirror, it had been three days, and people from Bureau were there.”

“Someone tipped them off about the cult?” Gabriel leans forward with elbows resting on his knees.

“Yeah. Kind of. The smell was awful, and the flies were everywhere. The buzzing was awful. It was late summer, it was hot. Thing is, thing is that those things, the demons from the corn, there was not one person left alive in a ten-mile radius. No animals. Everything butchered and left to rot in summer heat,” Jack draws in a shaky breath and Gabriel slowly moves to sit by his side unsure of his own actions – if there is any kind of comfort he can provide – but Jack leans into his embrace and lets his head rest in the crook of his neck. “They took me home so I could gather my things. I couldn’t go inside. There was a hand by itself on the porch, with a ring on, the flies were sitting on it, and it was mother’s. I couldn’t. And then, meowing loudly, Dizzy crawled from under the house, she was bloodied and sick, and missing her eye and ear, but she was alive, and she came to me.”

“I can see now why you love this dumb cat so much.”

“Yeah. She’s dumb and lazy but she’s the best cat ever,” Jack whispers and returns to petting Dizzy. “But I can’t… I can’t help thinking that maybe I was supposed to disappear after the dance, and everyone died because I wasn’t there for them to take me so they took everyone else.”

“If you had,” Gabriel kisses his hair, “then I wouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah. That makes it better,” Jack answers with no hint of sarcasm in his voice.

The last leg of the journey passes just like that, with Jack finally giving in to sleep and lightly snoring on his arm. Gabriel busies himself with a book yet the words on the pages escape him.

When the train pulls into their station they get off without a hitch. Jack handles the cab and the check-in – even if the receptionist gives them an unfriendly and appraising look. As Gabriel exits the small bathroom in their shared hotel room he smells the residue of the cigarette smoke filtering in from the outside.

Jack shrugs at his disapproving glare, an equivalent of a cheeky ‘what are you going to do about it?’, and walks past him. Gabriel shakes his head and sets out to do maintenance on his shotguns to the hum of the water running from the other side of the wall.

When Jack steps out of the shower and dries himself with the cheap hotel towel, he throws it to the ground. The mirror in the bathroom is fogged with steam and he wipes it with his hand to see in it what he sees in every single mirror – a silhouette cloaked in rolling darkness standing behind – invariably there. Watching. Waiting. Withering away.

The creature’s face blurs as it shifts between smooth polished bone and three broken pieces, and at times it crumbles apart in yellowed and blackened fragments.

“I won’t let it happen,” Jack whispers to it while his fingertips outline the edges of the skull on the surface of the cold glass. “I won’t let you suffer,” he promises as he takes a step back and slips the robe on.

He walks out of the bathroom and towards the small balcony. Gabriel leaves his disassembled shotgun behind and follows him like a bloodhound – and just as Jack puts a cigarette between his lips he steals it away and breaks it in half between his fingers, throws it down to the street below.

“Asshole,” Jack scoffs while leaning against the railing. “This city, it calls to me, that’s why I hate old cities. There’s too much history,” he turns to stare at the barely visible behind a monstrosity of a modernist metal sculpture brick building. “How do you feel about Nazis?”

“Not overly fond of them,” Gabriel shrugs.

“They’re still fighting here. You know, this was a demilitarized zone, but at the post office, that’s there,” Jack gestures with his chin, “they kept firearms illegally. In the end, they pumped petrol into the basement and set fire to it. Some of them burned alive, some of them they burned with flamethrowers. It still burns, even now.”

“That bad, huh? Sorry, should’ve…”

“I don’t think anywhere else would be better, at least here we’re where we need to be,” Jack cuts in with a slight grimace on his face. “I think I’ll get a chance to let off some steam. But,” he still smiles weakly and Gabriel takes a deep breath because even with the dimmed by clouds sunlight playing in his hair he looks hopeful – if weary, “there’s no map of the cellars, not to mention the deeper ones, it’s a clusterfuck of flooded or caved in rooms, no one’s exploring those, too dangerous. If the cockatrice is there, we might need more time to get to it.”

“Good you made reservations for the whole week.”

“Speaking of which, you know, we still have hours until we have to go meet the custodian,” Jack turns, the smile still playing on his lips as he hooks a finger behind the collar of Gabriel’s shirt, “and I’m not too keen on sightseeing, all things considered.”

He moves back and tugs on the shirt, and Gabriel lets him lead them inside, into the cool room. His heart cannot set on one rhythm as he sits down on the bed because this – this feels different – this is a conscious decision and not just falling back into old habits out of loneliness and deprivation.

Jack kneels between his thighs and slowly works the buttons of his shirt, slides the cloth off his shoulders, and Gabriel cannot help the shudder traveling up his spine. He brings up his hand to trace the scar over Jack’s lips and hates the fabric of the glove that won’t let him feel the skin underneath. Hates the scars on Jack’s face even more. Hates the fact that he was the one who put them there.

“Don’t think about it, it doesn’t matter,” Jack pushes him back with a whisper even as he crawls further back on the bed because to Gabriel it matters – the knowledge and the guilt eat away at him, and the memory of the lifeless eyes staring into the void haunts him. But Jack follows with his actions and his words and does not let him flee. “It wasn’t you, it was the thing they made you into.”

“Anytime, I could…”

“No, that thing, it’s gone, and only you remain, the true you,” Jack leans forward and touches their foreheads together. “It won’t happen. We will make sure it will never happen.”

It feels good to hear the reassurance. Gabriel chuckles, it almost catches in his throat when Jack tugs on the glove – he nearly tears his hand away.

“Don’t.” But Jack does not release his grip.

“I need, no, I want, all of you,” Jack stares at him with humbling intensity, “always.” And Gabriel can only nod as the glove slowly eases off of his hand. Jack holds it, raises the palm to his lips, and kisses gently – with care – each finger; lingers over the blackened flesh turning into sharp obsidian claws. The other glove follows and the same repeats, and the only thing Gabriel can hear is his own thundering heartbeat. “There is nothing to be afraid of,” Jack guides his hands.

As they lie Gabriel revels in the ability to touch, to feel the warm skin under his fingers, lazily draws abstract symbols in the sweat, and Jack observes him with unconcealed contentment.

“Why? Why did you come?” The unsaid ‘when I left you’ rings in the empty spaces between Gabriel’s words.

“You asked,” Jack quietly laughs leaning into his touch. “Besides, yeah, I made you a promise.”

“I don’t remember any.”

“You don’t have to. It’s enough that I remember it.”

“Must’ve been a silly promise,” Gabriel glances to the clock on the wall, there is time left to linger, and they still have the time of their own – together – something he never thought possible anymore.

“Yeah, I guess, a very silly promise.” Jack closes his eyes and leaves him to his ministrations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'It's both kind of sinister and sweet.' 'Can you see the Sword of Damocles yet?'


	3. Endings - Prologues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wolf, the cockatrice, and the dungeons - they deserve to have their own story (also, because undead Nazis).

**_Sometime later_ **

The wolf towers over them, its bulk seemingly too broad to fit into the spaces under the shadowed archway.

“You. You, I will know as you unleash me on the world,” it speaks to Jack – baring its yellowed fangs as it turns its head towards Gabriel and focuses the glare of its one golden eye on him. The other eye is gone and in its place a glistening wound seeping pus and clear fluid matting its fur sits. “But you, you I already know, Destroyer, and you are not welcome here, nor is your kin. Were it not for what you took from me, I would have ground your bones between my jaws long ago, as weak and pathetic as you are now.”

“We seek the passage to the cockatrice, to retrieve what it guards,” Jack answers before Gabriel has his chance to speak.

“The cockatrice? The old wyrm is long gone doddering mad to the singing whispers, and shriveled,” the wolf growls backing slowly into the shadows. “So be it. Let the wyrm bring you to your doom sooner than later, Destroyer. I will take from you what you stole from me, and then I will eat the sun and plunge the world into eternal darkness.”

 

**_Sometime later_ **

Herald of the Lost slithers forth from the womb of the void with a silent scream of singing whispers – and nothingness clings to his form in mucous strands of ripped membranes as he thrashes gasping for breath. Then, he raises slowly, his movements sharp and broken, like something that only wears flesh and bone for a fleeting moment and cannot fathom how it bends and flexes.

Herald speaks in the language of angels and around each syllable reality fractures and bleeds the void to seal itself with sluggish urgency – for it should not be uttered, and left to the singing whispers of the void.

Yet, Akande steps forward as Herald regards him with a smile that splits his face in a macabre gash – for this is the day of his vindication, and his is the reward to be reaped – the boon for his toils awaits him.

Fingers brush against his cheekbone in a caress, words curl around his senses, and his skin molts of his frame to reveal moist scales shimmering underneath. With each violent jerk of bones adjusting and slurping muscle shifting, with each unimaginable stab of pain and down on his knees, Akande has time to reflect on the nature of the recompense he had not expected – and to regret his pride with what remains.

When he stands, he is the first of the new race. He will sire the Lost back into the world ripe for the picking, and Herald leads him back into the darkness.

 

**_Sometime later_ **

The Sabbath murmurs, and Queen of Spiders presiding over her subjects stands proud and indignant, the dark crown wrought out of bog iron and betrayal sitting atop her head.

“You, a man, you dare to challenge me for my right to rule?”

“I come to you with the moon in my belly. I come to you with my brow adorned by the Lord of the Hunt and the blessings of Herne on my thighs. I come to you bedded by the Seven Year King. What have you to show for yourself, Queen of Spiders, but a crown forged with the still hearts of your dead lovers?”

 

**_Sometime later_ **

Jack can feel the void encroaching – the tendrils slowly climbing up his body – the searing cold and the freezing heat peeling the skin off his flesh and wriggling into his very existence – the hungry angels fighting in their frenzied avarice, the starvation and the desperation urging them onward.

Still, the calm descends upon him, for he can see the same darkness in Gabriel clutching his wrist with fraught strength, and understands this is the moment of the choice because Gabriel is not ready, not yet, and to call forth his nature is a war lost.

“Listen to me,” Jack smiles, “just listen, the mask, you don’t really need it, you never did, you never will.”

“This is really not the time,” Gabriel shouts back at him, his teeth bared and eyes red with smolder of hot coals.

“No, listen, you only think you need the mask but you don’t, but because you think you need it, you need it,” Jack uncurls his fingers and releases his grip, “so you have to find the missing pieces. Two more, just two more, Gabe.”

“Don’t! Don’t let go, I can get you out!”

“I made you a promise, once, long ago, and time to keep it has come. A life for a life.” It is easy, easier than ever before, to focus, and the pain of his blistering wrist is nothing – nothing at all – as are nothing the writhing claws of the Lost dug under his skin, into the very essence of what he is. “I’m sorry. Please, forgive me.”

And Gabriel lets go, his hand burned, screaming until all sounds are drowned out by the singing whispers. In the void, Jack curls around the last remnants of what is him lingering, and the smell of freshly tilled earth and lush growth assaults his senses. He looks to the sky where the stars sprawl in the shape of long-forgotten constellations and galaxies in memory of universes long gone and just waiting to be born again in violent explosions, each birth a cruel end and a hopeful beginning. Insects buzz a melodious cadence and fireflies dance a hypnotic ballet in the air.

He steps forward, his toes sink in the damp soft soil as he brushes away the cornstalks – the hushed rustling continuing when a light breeze stirs in the fields.

He knows he is alone, save for the one waiting for him in the small clearing full of broken bleached bones.

Reaper reaches out and Jack accepts, twines his fingers with black claws – dark and sharp like jagged obsidian. The question in a strange tilt and trill carries a sound of an accusation.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Jack smiles as Reaper pulls him close and its face nuzzles into his neck. “I won’t be here for it to end. A life for a life,” he gasps at claws traveling the length of his back. “Suffering for suffering. It’s a selfish wish born out of a selfish love.”

Reaper croons in a language that should never be spoken for it belongs to a different place and time, to singing whispers vibrating in the void, and around each syllable the reality bends.

“Forgive me my selfishness,” Jack traces the ridges of the skull with his fingertips – observing every little bump and irregularity – and as he is slowly laid down on the damp soft soil among broken bleached bones he knows Reaper’s face will feel like warm living flesh if he closes his eyes – but this time he will keep his them open as his world dies. Maybe this is the last act of kindness the cruel fate allows him.

Elsewhere, out of the womb of the void, Herald of the Lost slithers into the reality, to foretell the coming of those who were forgotten many a turn of the world ago.

 

**_Sometime later_ **

The rent is paid for another year. Gabriel closes the door behind himself and stops in place, unsure, observing the private mausoleum bereft of a body – in its place dust and remnants of life, all left almost like the day he had set his foot inside for the first time – the open cd case, the book thrown haphazardly on the table, the half-empty pack of cigarettes and the blue lighter, the shirt kicked in under the desk.

Pictures in the frames, of people he knows, and even one or two of his own, and a ghost of a conversation they once had.

Gabriel slowly slips off his gloves – it feels only right here, inside, in a place that is still Jack’s, still carries his memory – to accept himself as he is, just as Jack had accepted him. The tips of his claws trace stark lines in the dust gathered on the low wooden cupboard, his coat hangs on the back of a chair, his steps lead him to the bedroom, the bed unmade as it had been left that one morning.

He lies down between the covers and maybe he can imagine that some indescribable smell still lingers, remains to be found. And sometimes, when he dreams, in the little clearing among the stalks of corn Jack waits for him with fireflies dancing at the tips of his fingers, changed – alien – familiar, and Gabriel feels welcomed with every touch and word spoken in the intelligible cadence of the void.

The bed trembles under the added weight and he looks at what stirred him from his slumber, smiles as Dizzy, glaring, curls up beside him.

“You miss him too?” Gabriel asks, half-asleep, wondering, fingers reaching to pet her translucent fur, and may it be because of their shared predicament that she lets him, this one time. “She told me not to…”

In a moment, he scrambles frantically for his phone as Dizzy hisses at him. When Adawe picks up, he almost screams.

“He’s alive. She’s here, this dumb cat is here, Dizzy is here!”

 

**_Sometime later_ **

Some nights Jack sings to him, the other they spend lying curled together on the soft soil – yet sometimes Jack takes him somewhere else, beyond the fields of the corn.

The mountains crumble and fall apart revealing hidden underneath gargantuan shapes raising in clouds of dust and rock with misleading slowness owing to the distance as the sound of a bone-chilling thunder rolls over the plain.

The Unseen War.

Queen of Spiders collects her debts.

Herald of the Lost sits on his stone-cold throne, a fragment of the mask in his lap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so:  
> 1\. When I conceptualized this little thing - the last chapter was always this (but only 3 scenes instead of 6).  
> 2\. Yes, they are in some capacity story hooks, and also, worldbuilding, and playing on the concept of the effect taking place before the cause.  
> 3\. Thank You for reading :)  
> 4\. (Mini-rant: Do You know there is only one fic on AO3 that has a tag 'Eldritch Pregnancy' - and it's not Bloodborne)

**Author's Note:**

> I dub thee Bueau-verse. Tags are pretty accurate and there is one thing I'm not tagging - if You notice it, it's for You. If You don't, You don't. If You want confirmation, you need to ask directly.


End file.
